


the radio is playing your favourite song (open the door)

by theinvisibledisaster



Series: It's a Love Story After All [4]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (obviously - this is me we're talking about), Also Brotps galore, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Speculation, F/M, Love Confessions, Mindscape Stuff, POV Bellamy Blake, POV Clarke Griffin, That Classic Moment, but you don't know that, so you accidentally say more than you should, that awkward moment when the guy you're in love with climbs into your mind to rescue you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 03:51:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19310062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinvisibledisaster/pseuds/theinvisibledisaster
Summary: “Someone needs to go into Clarke’s mind and get her out.”A long silence followed his words.It was eventually broken by Raven, who asked, “Go into her mind how?”Bellamy and the others work out a way to send one of them into Clarke's mindscape to rescue her - naturally, he volunteers.Clarke is so used to talking to projections by now that she just assumes that is what he is, and may or may not confess things she's been holding onto for years.





	the radio is playing your favourite song (open the door)

**Author's Note:**

> the wonderful [@aainiouu](https://aainiouu.tumblr.com/) smashed together two theories - 1) Bellamy somehow gets into Clarke’s mindspace to save her and 2) Clarke confronts Bellamy at a time when she thinks she is gonna die and confesses her feelings - and she came away with:
> 
> "Clarke confesses to Bellamy in her mindscape thinking he is a projection but it is actually REAL Bellamy who came to save her"
> 
> and obviously i had SO MANY IDEAS. so here you are, (and An, I hope you like it!!! <3)
> 
> title comes from You Are Jeff by Richard Siken because of COURSE it does, and I actually included a passage from the poem at the beginning of this oneshot because it is SCARILY relevant. 
> 
> also: please ignore the junk science i used to make this possible - i just throw around some vaguely sciencey words in an attempt to deus ex machina my way through it, but to be fair, the show does the same thing so i'm in good company
> 
> also also: echo isn't here, neither is madi or gaia, i'm trying to make it as much about the OG delinquent family as possible, because that dynamic is so important to me and to Clarke.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it!!!

_You see it as a room, a tabernacle, the dark hotel. You’re in the hallway_  
_again, and you open the door, and if you’re ready you’ll see it, but_  
_maybe one part of your mind decides that the other parts aren’t ready,_  
_and then you don’t remember where you’ve been, and you find yourself_  
_down the hall again, the lights gone dim as the left hand sings the right_  
_hand back to sleep. It’s a puzzle: each piece, each room, each time you_  
_put your hand to the knob, your mouth to the hand, your ear to the_  
_wound that whispers._

 _You’re in the hallway again. The radio is playing your favorite song._  
_You’re in the hallway. Open the door again. Open the door._  
**You Are Jeff – Richard Siken**

 

* * *

 

 

It had taken far too much time for him to convince the others that Clarke was alive. They seemed convinced that he was just delusional with grief, that he didn’t know what he was talking about, and it wasn’t until Miller backed him – despite having not seen it – that the others tentatively agreed to help.

Echo had offered to try and bridge the gap between Madi and Gaia in order to keep Madi distracted – they didn’t want to get her hopes up only to have them crushed again – so they could plan in secret.

But even then, it hadn’t done much good, because none of them knew what to do about it or who they could even trust outside of that room.

“We could kidnap Josephine?” Miller suggested. “Tie her up to make sure she doesn’t figure out a way to kill Clarke before we rescue her?”

“Or, in order to make sure we _don’t_ get killed for treason, we could actually come up with some kind of _plan_ first?” Murphy drawled.

Raven was standing off to the side, deep in thought. “If I had the supplies, I could build some kind of rig to plug her into, maybe short-circuit Josephine’s mind drive until we can work out a way to bring Clarke back… but I’d need at least two days, and access to some pretty heavy machinery.”

“Unfortunately, that’s time she doesn’t have.” A voice said from the door, and they all turned, weapons raised, to find Russell standing there, looking more than a little guilty.

“What the hell do you want?” Bellamy growled, barely keeping himself contained.

Russell wrung his hands together. “I never wanted this. I only ever wanted my daughter back, I didn’t think…”

“Yeah, you didn’t _think.”_  Miller snapped.

He ignored the jab and continued. “I didn’t think it would end up this way. When I realised Clarke was still alive in there, I scanned her brain. With the two of them fighting for dominance, it will cause rapid brain deterioration. She’s got less than 36 hours before she dies, permanently.”

Rage was building in his chest, pushing out against his ribs, and Bellamy took a step forward, only to be stopped by both Murphy and Miller.

“So is that what you came here to say?” He asked, fighting back angry tears. “That you win, we lose, Clarke’s dead anyway?”

Russell shook his head fervently. “No. No, I promise you, I came to help. I told Josephine that we would figure out the nightblood solution and get her a willing host, but she… rebelled. She refuses to relinquish Clarke’s body now that she’s conquered it, and I can’t stop her on my own. I made a mistake. I know that now. But I’m trying to remedy it.”

Bellamy regarded him carefully, the anger not so much subsiding as shifting in a different direction – towards Josephine – and he finally nodded to Miller and Murphy, who both moved back. He faced Russell head-on.

“How?”

He pulled a syringe from his pocket and twisted it in his hands. “A long time ago, one of Simone’s swaps went wrong. The mind drive didn’t quite take to the host’s brain stem, and Simone was left swimming around in her own brain, like a record that keeps skipping, stuck in a loop. The other person was fully erased, but the mind drive went into safety mode for some reason and Simone was trapped. So, like with a record, she needed a little nudge.”

“Feel like making sense any time soon?” Murphy asked dryly.

He sighed, holding the syringe out to Bellamy. “There’s a safety built into the mind drives that locks the consciousness away, and if Clarke can figure out a way to activate that, then Josephine will be trapped and Clarke’s consciousness will automatically take over. Once you’ve done that, it should be easy to remove the mind drive, but finding the safety won’t be simple – Josie’s clever, she’ll have hidden it somewhere.”

“But, how can we let Clarke know without alerting Josephine to our plan?” Emori asked.

“That’s what the syringe is for. I’ll bring Josie down here, you paralyse her – don’t sedate her, if you do that she’ll be right there with Clarke and that would be beyond bad – and Ryker and I will bring up the equipment we used to help Simone. But… it’s complicated.” He paused, as if trying to work out the right way to say what came next. “Someone needs to go into Clarke’s mind and get her out.”

A long silence followed his words.

It was eventually broken by Raven, who asked, “Go into her mind how?”

“There’s a machine, we hook one person up to the other and when the first person is unconscious, they can drift into the other person’s mind. It’s not as elegant as a drive, but it works for short trips, and it doesn’t require black blood, just as long as you keep particular fluids running through your veins.”

“This sounds familiar, so I’m saying it now – if anyone asks me to pump someone’s heart again, I’m out.” Murphy quipped, which was followed by a dull ‘oof’ so Bellamy assumed someone had hit him.

To his credit, Russell only looked mildly put out. “No need for that, we have an IV with all the fluids you’d need. It’s a mixed bag, however; it’s impossible to know what you’re going to find, Clarke could be stuck somewhere horrible or reliving old memories, and you might have to snap her out of those before you can help her find what you’re looking for.”

After a minute in which Bellamy did nothing but glare at Russell while he thought it over, he acquiesced, and Russell disappeared to go find Josephine, telling them all to meet him in the secret lab behind the room full of skeletons.

“Great. Not ominous at all.” Murphy groaned.

“How about you just shut up for once,” Miller clapped back. “I don’t care how scary it is, or how little you care about Clarke, or how self-serving you are, but right now you are going to do the right thing, Murphy, because if you don’t, I’ll kill you myself.”

Murphy blinked slowly. “I do care about Clarke.”

“You sure have a funny way of showing it.”

“Just because I didn’t have a total meltdown like Bellamy–”

“–no-one expected that from you, Murphy, all we expected was for you not to roll over for Josephine the second she said ‘beg’.”

Murphy opened his mouth to speak again and this time it was Bellamy who interrupted. “That’s enough, both of you. We can fight later; right now, we need to focus on getting Clarke back.”

With that, he strode from the room, fists still clenched at his sides and the idea that he could still save Clarke spinning wildly through his mind, lighting him up and spurring him forward.

_Hope._

 

 

* * *

 

 

She allowed herself a full hour to lie there, staring at the ceiling of her cell and wallowing in self-pity.

She knew she needed to try and find another way out, to get another message through seeing as the first one clearly didn’t work, but just for an hour she wanted to sit and seethe in self-loathing.

“That’s not healthy, you know.” A familiar voice said, and she didn’t turn her head this time. Didn’t need to. She felt him come and sit down beside her, his familiar warmth enveloping her in a way it hadn’t in years, and she sank into it the way one sinks into the water after a long day.

“I don’t care.”

He harrumphed. The noise was so achingly familiar it made her want to cry, but she’d done enough of that in the last few hours. He looked down at her and frowned, chastising. “You should.”

“I’m dead, Wells, I think I’m allowed a few concessions here.”

He made that noise again, a little more irritated that before. “You’re _not_ dead, Clarke.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No. I don’t. Monty already gave you a speech about giving up, are you really going to make me give another one?”

She didn’t answer, choosing instead to close her eyes and take a deep breath through her nose.

In the end, when she did speak, it wasn’t about her impending death. “He would have loved you.”

“Who?”

“Monty.”

“We met.”

“Yeah, but… you never _knew_ each other. Never had the opportunity to become friends, or family. I loved him so much, Wells. Still do. Just like I love you – like a brother, like someone closer than a brother. He was my family.”

“And you were his.”

“Was I?” She asked bitterly.

He smacked her in the arm and her eyes flew open, indignation flaring, but he only glared right back. “Yes, Clarke. He loved you right back.”

She sighed. “I know. I’m just… tired. I’m so _tired,_ Wells. You never had to find out what it was like, trying to survive for so long. Sometimes, there’s a small part of me that’s glad you died before things got really bad. I picture what it would have been like to see you tortured at Mount Weather or irradiated in Praimfaya, and I just… I feel _relieved._ What kind of person feels relieved that their best friend in the world died alone in the woods?”

“The kind that knows there are much worse fates than that.” He said sternly. “Thinking those things doesn’t make you a bad person, Clarke, it makes you _human.”_

“Yeah, well, I’m tired of being human. I’m tired of everything. It’s all just so _much,_ all the time – I can never just stop, not for a second. Every time I do, I make things worse. Then again, every time I _try_ it just makes things worse too. Maybe Josephine was right; they’re better off without me there.”

The back of Wells’ hand hit her shoulder again.

“You know that’s not true.”

“Please enlighten me.”

“I’m not the angel from It’s a Wonderful Life, Clarke, I’m not going to whisk you away and show you what life would be like if you didn’t exist. All I can tell you is that without you there, they all would have died a lot sooner.”

“Some of them, maybe–”

“–no, Clarke. _All of them._ You went into the City of Light, remember? _You_ spoke to A.L.I.E. – if you hadn’t, then you wouldn’t have known to look for the nuclear breakdowns. Without you, they would have figured it out eventually, but by the time they knew enough to look, there wouldn’t have been enough time to do anything about it. They _all_ owe their lives to you, whether they care enough to remember or not.”

“They don’t owe me anything.”

He smiled then, softness spreading over his features and wrapping her in a nostalgic joy she thought she’d forgotten how to feel. “I know; you never do anything so they’ll owe you. You do it because you’re a good person and you care about them.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, so instead she simply pushed herself up and turned to face him, sitting cross-legged on the floor of her little cell. He glanced around at the sketches on the walls.

“You know,” he started, a teasing tone in his voice that was already making her hackles raise, “Bellamy Blake is in a lot of these, for someone you don’t like.”

She glared. “You’re a projection, Wells, you know damn well that I don’t hate him.”

He flashed a grin. “But I never got to watch that happen. Can you imagine, if I’d lived, the amount of shit I would have given you for falling in love with the angry hot guy from the Dropship?”

A laugh fell from her lips, unbidden, and she tried to remember the last time she’d laughed with Wells. It felt like a hundred years ago. Well, she supposed, it was. But it wasn’t supposed to feel that way. She tilted her head at him, smile drifting slightly.

“I miss you.”

He huffed, shaking his head sadly, and got to his feet, holding out his hands to pull her up. When she took them, they stepped out the door, but instead of coming face to face with the hallway, they ended up standing behind her parent’s couch, an old football match playing on the tv in front of them. She smiled at the memories it brought, and then he tugged her wrist once more, and when she turned they were sitting in the dropship as it hurtled towards the Earth.

This time, instead of yelling at him, she gripped his hand tighter and wished that she never had to let go.

She blinked, and when she opened her eyes, they were sitting in an old car and there was a bottle in her hand that smelled strongly of alcohol.

He squeezed her fingers. “I’m right here. I know you miss me, Clarke, but you don’t have to. I never left, not really.”

“But I was so horrible to you.” She said, horrified to find that there were tears pressing against her lashes when she’d decided so staunchly not to cry anymore.

A second later, they were standing in the forest where he’d told her the truth about her father’s death, and she was so overwhelmed with the heartbreak of that moment that she threw herself into his arms just like then. He embraced her warmly and she sniffled into his shirt and wished more than anything that she could live this moment again and again and never move forward.

“I forgave you a long time ago, Clarke.” He said quietly. “When are you going to forgive yourself?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

In the end, it had been a no brainer who was going to venture into Clarke’s head to rescue her, although there had been some contention initially.

When they arrived at the lab, they found Russell hooking Josephine’s paralysed body up to a machine attached to the gurney she was lying on, whilst Ryker messed with something on the chair in the centre of the room. He looked around when they entered.

“Okay, which one of you is going?”

They hesitated.

Russell straightened. “I should. She’s my daughter, I should stop her.”

“No way in hell we’re letting you crawl around Clarke’s brain,” Raven hissed. “I’ll go, I’ve dealt with A.L.I.E. in the past, I have some experience with things like this.”

“Raven.” Bellamy said quietly. “You know I have to do this.”

She sighed.

“It has to be me, Raven, you _know_ that. I owe it to her.”

“Yeah, I know.” She said, resigned, and gestured towards the objectively terrifying lab chair in the centre of the room. He tried really hard not to think about the footage they’d seen of this room, but it was impossible, especially when he turned to look at Josephine’s angry, panicked eyes darting around.

Bellamy lay down and suppressed more than one wince as Raven hooked the machines up to him.

There was an IV bag beside his head, filled with some kind of vaguely glowing liquid, and he could see Clarke’s body on his other side. He jerked his eyes away. He didn’t want to see her like this.

Instead, he looked to his friends. Raven and Emori were standing by Ryker at the computer, both frowning worriedly, Miller was hovering anxiously, eyes locked onto Russell as he adjusted the needle in Clarke’s arm, and Murphy was leaning against the wall in an attempt to look casual, which didn’t work if you noticed the way his brows drew together and the tense set of his shoulders.

They could do this.

“Okay,” Ryker said slowly, hand hovering over the keyboard, “I’m sorry, but this is going to hurt.”

“Great.” He said, clenching his jaw in anticipation.

“Bring her back.” Raven said quietly.

“I will.” He said the words like a promise, and he’d never meant something so much in his life, and then a stabbing pain coursed through his head and everything went black.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They were sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Josephine’s door, facing each other down.

“Your move.” She smirked.

“You think you can get into my head, Clarke? I’m immune to your tactics by now.”

“Tick-tock, Jaha,” she pressed, and he grumbled good-naturedly and _finally_ moved his bishop forward, taking one of her pawns and setting it down neatly beside him with the other pieces he’d taken from her already.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re going easy on me.”

“Well, it’s been over a hundred years since you’ve played, I thought you might want a bit of a run up,” he pointed out, which only made her stick her tongue out at him.

“Shut it, Clarence, I’m trying to make my move.”

He laughed, “I told you, I’m not–”

“–Clarke?!”

She froze, her knight still trapped between her fingers, and dragged her eyes up, past the board and Wells, until she found what she knew she was going to: Bellamy, standing at the end of the hallway, staring at her with some mix of awe and confusion.

She swallowed.

“Clarke?” He asked again.

She searched for her voice, but all she could come up with was a feeble, “Hey.”

“You’re alive.” He said, pointlessly. He was advancing towards them now, albeit hesitantly, and she reminded herself that he wasn't real, that he was just a projection. “Are you okay?”

“Well, my king’s in a little trouble,” she hummed, putting her knight down in front of Wells’ rook, blocking its path, “but I’ve got it handled.”

“No, I mean… Josephine’s trying to kill you, aren’t you worried?”

“Thank you!” Wells said, rounding on him. “That’s what I’ve been saying!”

“Wells.” He said awkwardly.

“Bellamy.” He said back, mirroring his tone.

Clarke made a face. “You know, you two don’t have to be awkward with each other now. I know you never had the chance to get past it in the real world, but you’re both in my head, you may as well act like it. Wells, it’s your move.”

Wells turned back to her with a disdainful frown. “Clarke, be serious, it’s been hours since you sent that message, and nothing’s changed. You need to start thinking of another plan.”

She groaned. “What do you _think_ I’ve been doing?”

“Playing chess. Crying. Feeling sorry for yourself.” He listed off.

“Yeah, _while_ I try and work out what to do. I am perfectly capable of hating myself and coming up with plans at the same time, I’ve been doing it for years; I can multitask.” She observed the board. “It’s still your move.”

He pushed his queen forward.

“All I’m saying is, we know you better than anyone, Clarke, and we know your self-preservation instinct isn’t that strong. So forgive me for assuming you might just be playing chess.”

She moved her rook to the right and took his queen. “Check.”

He groaned. “I give up, you’re a lost cause.”

“So is your king unless you protect him,” she pointed out, gesturing at his side of the board.

“Uh, Clarke,” Bellamy said, shifting his weight anxiously, “you don’t think there are better uses of your time right now than beating Wells at chess? You’ve only got twenty-four hours left before Josephine kills you herself or your brain melts down, but either way if we don’t do something, you die, and I’d rather not have to go through that again.”

She watched Wells move a pawn while she thought it over. “The only way I have to communicate is through Josephine’s mindscape, and luckily she thinks she locked me out, so she’s not looking for me in there, _but_ that means that I can’t do anything too obvious or she’ll catch on and do something drastic.”

“So we’ll work something out,” Bellamy said placatingly.

Clarke moved her bishop forward and tipped Wells’ king over. “Checkmate.”

Wells huffed, but he didn’t look all that bothered, and when she met his gaze, she could see the expression he always used when he was about to do something stupidly valiant and noble. He got to his feet and helped her up with him, carefully manoeuvring her around the chessboard.

He took a step back, glancing between Clarke and Bellamy as he did. “I think I should leave you two to talk.”

“No!” Clarke snatched at his sleeve and he paused. “Please, please don’t go.”

He turned back and wrapped her in a bone-crushing hug. “I told you Clarke, I’m always here.”

“You’re not.” She held him tighter. “You’re not here anymore and I miss you, Wells please don’t leave me again.”

“I have to. You don’t belong here; you belong in the land of the living, with your friends and the people you love.”

“I love _you.”_

He extricated himself from her arms and held her face in his hands carefully, eyes solemn and full of so much affection. “I love you too, Clarke. Always. But if you stay here with me, then this is all they’ll get: memories of you to cry over, and a voice in the back of their heads that sounds vaguely like yours. Don’t you think they deserve more than that? You love them all so much, Clarke. It’s time to love them enough to _live.”_

“Wells, please,” she begged.

He turned to Bellamy. "Take care of her or I'll come back and kick your ass."

Clarke was still trying to get him to stay, but he simply kissed her on the forehead and blinked out of existence.

She kicked the chessboard, sending the pieces flying through the air until they too disappeared from the corridor, and it was just her and Bellamy standing there, ten feet away from each other and neither of them ready to bridge the distance.

He opened his mouth as if to say something, but nothing came out.

She straightened and walked past him.

When she heard his footsteps following her, she moved left down a hallway and opened a door.

They were on the bridge of the Eligius ship and the planet was turning slowly in the window, the two suns casting ample light on them as they stood side by side, looking down at it.

“It seemed like a fresh start,” she mused.

“We’ll get one,” he said. “One day, we’ll get to start over and have peace.”

She didn’t say anything, and he didn’t press her to speak, so they lulled into a semi-awkward silence as they watched Sanctum.

He was wearing the same clothes as he had been that day, when Jordan had shown them Monty’s tape, and she registered that he hadn’t been wearing those clothes when he arrived. He was the first one of her projections to alter with the timeline like she did, rather than just remaining in the state she remembered them most fondly in.

He glanced over at her but she refused to meet his eye.

She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts, and when she looked up again, they were standing in Mount Weather and alarms were going off faintly somewhere but it all seemed a little further away than it had at the time. Bellamy was younger, standing beside her cleanshaven and wearing that uniform she had nightmares about. He took in their surroundings with some level of surprise and trepidation, but it quickly fell away to concern when he saw that her hand was resting on the lever. The very same lever they’d pulled together the first time. Her fingers were wrapped around it but she didn’t move it. Even in her mind, she was scared of it.

But maybe that was good – in a memory as awful as this, confronting Bellamy about what Josephine had shown her seemed easier, less of a mountain to scale.

“Clarke…” He started.

“Why’d you do it?” She asked softly, staring somewhere off his shoulder.

He sighed, leaning an arm on the back of the chair beside him. “You know why. You were dead–”

“–because they murdered me!”

“Exactly! They killed you! And they knew Madi was a nightblood.” He was frowning in that way he always did when he was angry at himself for something. “What happens if we run? We die too. I promised you I wouldn’t let that happen to Madi.”

She groaned in frustration and pressed the heel of her palm against her head. “I know, I know, sorry. I’m just… frustrated. I think Josephine got to me.”

“Josephine was here?” He asked.

She didn’t answer, just sort of hummed agreement and started rummaging through the desk. She hadn’t had time to do that when she was here the last time.

The next time he spoke, it sounded closer. “Did she hurt you?”

“Josephine? I don’t know. Maybe. Not really.” She hesitated. “She showed me her memory of you taking the deal and I guess it just threw me off. But I know why you had to do it, I’m not blaming you, I just… I’m stuck in here and no-one knows and I tried to send a message and it didn’t work and now I’m going to die trapped in a prison of my own making. It hasn’t exactly been an ideal week.”

“Your message got through, Clarke.” He said, sounding way more certain that she felt.

She huffed. “You _would_ say that, you’re the person my brain sent me right now because I need hope. Stupid, hopeful Bellamy, always giving me a reason to keep going, to hold on just a little longer. I thought my brain was keeping you from me because the guilt would be too overwhelming, but I think it’s worse. I think you’re my last resort – the thing I get when I’ve got nothing left to give – which means my brain knows how screwed I am and it’s trying to placate me.”

“No, Clarke, that’s not what’s happening–”

“–no?” She asked. “When I needed to know I was still alive, I got Dad. When I needed to be told not to give up, I got Monty. When I needed a friend, I got Wells. And now I’m dying and my brain sends you. Because my brain knows that you’re the last face I want to see before I… that dying wouldn’t hurt so much if I had you here with me.”

“Dammit Clarke, you’re _not_ dying in here, I won’t let you!” He growled. “We are going to find a way out of this and then I’m going to kill every Prime I can find.”

“See,” she sighed, “that’s the old Bellamy talking. The new Bellamy would never resort to that, he knows better.”

“There’s no new Bellamy, I’m the same guy I always was.”

She scoffed.

In turning away from him, she accidentally stepped into another memory, and suddenly they were in a familiar room and she was holding a pen in her hand and staring down at the single space left on a list of a hundred people.

She glanced up to find him already leaning on the table, wearing the outfit he’d worn that day, the one that was burned into her mind.

It seemed to be affecting him too, if the way his expression shuttered and his breath caught was anything to go by.

“If I’m on that list, you’re on that list.” She murmured, almost to herself. “Do you have any idea how much those word have meant to me over the years? It was like… a lifeline. A reason to live when I started running out – every time I thought of giving up, I would hear your voice in the back of my head, reminding me to still have hope.”

She could see him swallow hard in her peripheral vision, eyes downcast and stance tense, and she wondered idly why he seemed so different from her other projections. Then again, this was _Bellamy._ He’d never been like anyone else in her life. He’d always been different, _special._ She should probably be used to it by now.

“And that’s what you are now,” she continued, rolling the pen between her fingers. “You’re the last vestiges of hope I have. You always were.”

He reached out, hand closing over hers and stopping the movement. “Okay. If I’m your hope, then use me. You told Wells you’ve been trying to come up with something, some way of getting out of here. Don’t give up yet, Clarke, we’ve still got time.”

“I hate it.”

“Hate what?”

“Time.” She groaned. “For you and me there’s always too much or not enough. Too much time apart, not enough time together, too much time spent dwelling on the things we’ve done, not enough time spent looking to the future.”

He rested his other hand on her shoulder, setting his thumb into the groove of her muscle there in exactly the same way he had on that day. _We still breathing?_

“You can do this, Clarke. You’re smarter and stronger than Josephine, and you’ve got something she doesn’t.”

“What?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Me.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Bellamy hadn’t counted on her not thinking he was real.

To be fair, he hadn’t really counted on Clarke’s mind being a series of painful memories and hallucinations of her old best friend, but he found a way to roll with it.

Even if he couldn’t convince her he was really there, he could still help her find Josephine’s off-switch.

They were sitting in Clarke’s cell while she listened to him explaining the safety in the mind drive, and he was doing his level best not to count how many of the wall sketches he was in. It was a lot.

“So you’re saying we have to go into her mindscape again?” Clarke reiterated, distaste on her face. “Great. Where’s Monty when you need him?”

“Busy.” A voice said, and they both jerked around to see Harper sitting on Clarke’s bed, swinging her legs as she grinned down at them. “Besides, I’m way cooler.”

“Harper,” Clarke scrambled to her feet and pulled her into a hug, which the other woman gladly reciprocated.

She was wearing the same gear as she had during their last months before Praimfaya, and her hair was braided up around her head. She looked younger than Bellamy remembered her, and his heart ached. Because his fondest memories of Harper were from the Ring, but Clarke’s were all from before that, on the ground, and it made tears rise behind his eyes. She’d missed out on so much.

When the women separated, Harper smiled over at him. “Hey Bellamy. You’re not supposed to be here.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, thinking. On some level, Clarke’s subconscious must have been aware that he wasn’t just a projection, it was just _Clarke_ who refused to accept it. Harper recognised him though, that he didn’t fit, that it didn’t make sense for him to be there. Rather than drawing attention to it, he just smirked back the way he would have done when she was alive.

“Yeah, well, when have you ever known me to sit on the sidelines?”

“Wow, you really don’t want me to answer that,” she teased, sending a pointed look between him and Clarke. She slid off the cot and paced slowly around the cell, taking in the drawings. “Monty already broke into Josephine’s worst memory, so all the doors are unlocked, we just need to know which direction we’re going once we get in there.”

Clarke nodded, expression clearing, and Bellamy wanted to cry at the familiar expression – it meant she had an idea.

She strode to the door and when she opened it, the three of them were standing in the corridor in front of the big red door to Josephine’s mind. Bellamy realised his clothes were back to the ones he’d started in, and his beard had returned. He glanced over to see Harper, who was still in the same outfit as before, but now she was tying a long strip of black around her head, while her hair hung loose about her shoulders.

She reached the door first and kicked it open so hard it hit the wall behind it with a loud bang. When they stared at her in surprise, she shrugged.

“What?” She asked innocently.

Clarke laughed, bright and unburdened, and Bellamy followed them into a stuffy looking library. In any other situation, this would have felt like heaven to him: so many books on display. But this place felt wrong. There was something in the air that felt _off_ somehow, like decay or something worse, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“We have to assume Josephine would have hidden the safety somewhere only she would know how to find it.” Harper trailed her fingers along one of the shelves. “She’d want it within easy access if she got trapped, but hard to find if someone wanted to sabotage her.”

“Okay,” Clarke eyed all the books. “So which memory would she hide it in?”

They got to work.

Each of them picked an aisle to walk down and look over the spines to see if they could find something of use.

Bellamy studied every one of them carefully, eyes only occasionally darting up to check on Clarke.

Which was why he missed it, a few hours in, when she gave up.

It wasn’t until he realised Harper wasn’t in the aisle to his left anymore, and that her voice was instead coming from his right, that he noticed.

Clarke was leaning heavily against one of the shelves, a look of defeat on her face, and Harper was standing in front of her with one hand on her hip. He ducked a little to see better through the gap, and caught the end of Harper’s sentence.

“…don’t get to give up, Clarke.”

“I’m not giving up, Harper, I’m being realistic. We’ve got barely twelve hours left, and there’s decades of memories here, we’re never going to find it in time.”

“We’ve fought against bigger evils than this, Clarke. We got out of Mount Weather, we lived through the end of the world – twice – we can do this. You can do this. No matter what we’re up against, whether it’s Pike’s regime or grounders hiding in the trees, we can get through anything.”

“I wish I could be that optimistic.”

“Optimism takes work.” She said harshly, and Clarke snapped to attention. “And I know better than anyone what it’s like to lose hope. You know that. You, me and Murphy: we _know_ what it’s like to reach that point and come back from it. Monty and I were living proof that things can always get better. But it took _work,_ Clarke. You’ve always been a pragmatist, trying to keep us all afloat, to reach the bare minimum just to get us all through it, and like Monty said, I know that you’re tired. It can’t be easy.”

She placed her hands on Clarke’s shoulders.

“We all looked up to you so much, you know that? You and Bellamy, you were the only thing holding most of us together back at the dropship. There were no adults, no family to speak of, except the one that you two made for us on the ground. You saved us all then, and countless times after that, and now your people are out there without you, unable to fight back as long as the Primes hold the advantage and Josephine has you. Your family is out there; your daughter, my _son,_ and if they die, or worse, because you were stuck in here, you’ll never be able to forgive yourself. You have to help them, Clarke. And you do that by helping yourself first.”

Clarke sniffled. “I’m sorry.”

Bellamy wasn’t sure what she was apologising for, but Harper seemed to understand.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I miss you.”

“I know.” Harper said earnestly. “You can do this, Clarke. You’re not alone, you never were.”

And then she was gone, and it was just Clarke, standing alone in the center of the aisle. She caught Bellamy’s eye through the stacks and smiled sadly at him. He stepped back and walked around the end of the bookshelf, intending to find her, but she was already there waiting for him and she stepped into his arms before he even realised he’d held them out for her. He curled forward into her embrace the way he always did, and she pressed her chin against his shoulder the way _she_ always did, and he wanted more than anything else for this to be real, for them to be able to do this again outside of Josephine’s wretched library, when they had _time._

She stiffened.

“Clarke?” He asked anxiously.

“Alone.” She breathed. “Josephine is _alone.”_

She stepped back, but noticeably didn’t go far; her hand sliding down his arm until it was curled around his elbow, and dragged him towards a forgotten corner of the library.

“What do you mean? She’s got her parents, her friends, she’s got lifetimes worth of memories filled with people–”

“She’s selfish.” Clarke said breathlessly, still leading him somewhere. “She only cares about people when they can help her get what she wants. Which means that she’s alone. Except for…”

She reached for a book, and when she pulled it, they slipped into one of Josephine’s memories.

They were standing in Josephine’s room in Sanctum, and there was paint everywhere, spilled on the floor, and Josephine – in a body Bellamy didn’t recognise - was pulling a shirt on over her head while the guy next to her smiled softly, just barely covered by a blanket. There were orange handprints on his bare chest and she was covered in streaks of colour. It wasn’t hard to guess what had just occurred.

 _“That’s my shirt.”_ He mumbled, sitting up to kiss her exposed shoulder.

 _“And this way, you get to keep it off,”_ she teased.

 _“That’s not a good idea.”_ He pointed out, gesturing around them. _“We were supposed to be working on a solution to the black bloodline dwindling, and instead we managed to knock over every jar of paint you own and we **still** didn’t make it to a bed.”_

 _“Yeah, but wasn’t it worth it?”_ She asked dreamily, kissing his cheek.

They slowly started tidying all the paintbrushes and canvases away, stopping to kiss each other at frequent intervals and getting distracted whenever they stood too close together. When the supplies were properly organised on the desk, Gabriel grinned.

_“We should probably clean the floor before we start on any serious work.”_

_“Yeah?”_ Josephine asked, trailing her palms up his chest until they were nose to nose.

The memory reset, and the room was in disarray again, Josephine back on the floor with Gabriel as she pulled his shirt over her head.

Bellamy frowned and Clarke caught his eye.

“Why are we here?” He asked.

Her hand was still on his arm. “This is one of Josephine’s happiest memories, but she keeps it pushed to the back of her mindscape with all the bad ones – why?”

“That’s Gabriel, right? So maybe she doesn’t want to think about when she was happy with him, if he left her.”

Clarke dragged her eyes away but her fingers gripped him tighter reflexively. She scanned the room, looking for something. “That’s not it.”

“How can you possibly know that?” He tried to catch her gaze again, but she was pointedly looking everywhere except at him.

“You know how.” She muttered.

“What?”

“You betrayed me.” She said loudly, disturbing the relaxed memory, and Bellamy was almost worried that Josephine would suddenly realise they were there, but it just kept playing. Clarke sighed. “Back on Earth, when you left me chained up and put the flame in Madi, it was… it was like all my worst nightmares came true. You never meant it to be, but it was the worst possible betrayal. I was… god, I was so broken after that. And then I walked away from you. I betrayed you right back and nearly killed everyone in the process.”

Guilt took up residence in his throat but he forged past it. “I forgave you for that, Clarke. A long time ago. Just like you forgave me for what I did to Madi.”

“I know.” She whispered. “What I’m saying is, Josephine hates Gabriel because he betrayed her, but he was still… he was the person who’d been there since the beginning, the person who conquered death for her. Without him, she wouldn’t even be here. She knows that. There are plenty of memories with him, good and bad, filed exactly where they’re supposed to be, chronologically. So why is this memory stacked on a shelf with all the other memories she hates looking at, next to their first eclipse?”

Understanding dawned.

“Because she’s trying to hide it.”

“Because she’s trying to hide it,” Clarke confirmed, grinning at him.

“Okay, so what are we looking for?” He asked.

“Anything out of the ordinary.”

They split up and got to work combing the room for anything that stuck out while the memory played on a loop around them, resetting every four minutes or so. Bellamy searched through the paints while Clarke took the bed and the cupboards, and by the time they met back up again in the middle, it felt like they’d searched every inch of the memory.

“This can’t be all there is.” Clarke said urgently. “We’ve missed something.”

Bellamy glanced around the room again, and this time, when the memory reset, he noticed one of the large paintbrushes on the desk didn’t move with the rest of them. While the others ended up sprawled over the ground and the desk, it stayed upright, propped against the wall.

He reached blindly out for Clarke, catching her wrist.

“There.”

She followed his eyeline and they moved towards the desk in unison.

She touched the handle of the brush, and when she did, something flickered and it disappeared. In its place there was a metal lever set into the wood of the table.

“This is it,” he breathed. “We can turn her off.”

He shifted forward to yank the damn thing, but she tugged at his arm, stopping him. He looked down at her, confused, and the heartbreak he found in her expression was enough to knock him back a step.

“Clarke? What’s wrong?”

“When I wake up…” A single tear slipped down her cheek. “I’m not going to get this – the people I love most being by my side. My dad and Wells and Monty and Harper – when I wake up, I’m going to be alone again.”

He shook his head frantically. “You will not be alone. You will never be alone again, Clarke, I promise.”

She sobbed, catching herself with her fingers over her mouth as if she could hold it in. “But you’re not real either, Bellamy. Out there, there’s still so much space between us and I don’t know if we can fix it.”

“What are you talking about?” He asked, practically begged.

“I love you!” She cried out. Bellamy felt his strength leave him faster than he thought possible, and he found himself leaning on the table just to stay upright. _She loved him and he **felt it** like a blow to the chest. _She was shaking her head at herself, eyes scrunched shut, and her voice was just barely level. “I’m _in_ love with you, Bellamy. I have loved you for so long, and so much, and when I go back out there, I have to go back to pretending that I’m okay when you’re not around and I can’t do it anymore.”

“Clarke…” But he didn’t know what to say.

“I know I have to.” She murmured. “But I just… I want a few more minutes in here, with you, where I don’t have to pretend anymore.”

She looked so lost, so earnest and mournful, that there was really no way he could deny her.

He swallowed and lifted a shaky hand up to brush the hair from her face. “Okay Princess. We can stay as long as you want.”

She looked up at him with tear-stained cheeks and her bottom lip between her teeth and so much _hope_ in her eyes and fuck, he’d forgotten how easily she could make his heart trip over itself.

He would see her again soon.

She was going to come back to him.

She was going to live.

He felt a slow smile forming in his cheeks and her eyes drifted down to his lips.

Then, without warning, she flung her arms around his neck and dragged him down, pressing her lips fervently against his.

_Clarke Griffin was kissing him._

He reacted immediately, hands finding her waist and sliding up her spine, bringing her closer; as close as possible. Hers were moving up until she was carding them through his hair and he couldn’t help but moan into her mouth and she gasped slightly at the sound, which only made it _worse_ because now he knew what that sounded like and he would have given _anything_ to hear it again.

She tugged at his bottom lip with her teeth and it jolted him back to reality enough for him to slow the kiss down, pulling back until their foreheads were pressed together. He refused to let her go, however, and it seemed she had the same idea, fingers tangled almost painfully in his curls.

Her chest was heaving against his, which was more than a little distracting, and he wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of his life holding her like this. He closed his eyes and tried to memorise the feeling.

“You have to come back to me, Clarke,” he breathed. “I can’t lose you again.”

“Bellamy…”

“You have to know,” he brought his hands up to cup her face in his palms, swiping tears away with his thumbs, “surely, by now… Clarke you have to know. You know I love you, right?”

“I know.” She said mournfully. “Just not like I love you.”

“That’s not true.” He said urgently. “I’ve been in love with you since we were back at the Dropship. I am stupidly in love with you, Clarke Griffin, and it doesn’t matter how many years we spend apart or whether you were with Lexa or I thought you were dead, I have loved you. I still love you.”

“But Echo…”

“Knows that.” He opened his eyes and leaned back enough to look at her. “She broke up with me when she saw how broken I was after you died. She wanted to be there for me, and she knew that if she was there for me as my girlfriend it would only make things worse, so she told me she’d always known how I felt about you. Our friends know, our enemies know, god, Clarke, how can you _not?!_   It’s always been you, Princess.”

“But… you’re talking like… Bellamy you can’t know any of that, you’re not real.”

He dropped a kiss to her temple. “Come home to me, Princess.”

She leaned her forehead against his shoulder briefly, gathering her strength before she reached for the lever.

“Just one more thing,” he said quickly, and her hand fell back to her side. “This memory. I know that you knew once we found it that it was the right one, but… How did you know it would even be here?”

She bit her lip again, trying to find the right words.

“After I left you behind, I tried not to think about you. I kept reminding myself that you’d betrayed me first, that it wasn’t my fault that you were in the pit, that your sister was the one in the wrong. Yet no matter what, memories of you kept creeping back in. All the times you told me we were in this together. And it hurt, because none of those memories could fix the fact that you said together and then you walked away, and I hated you so much for making me care and then breaking my heart. But no matter how much I hated you then, I loved you more.” She slid her hand down his arm until she could lace their fingers together. “I will _always_ love you more.”

He looked down at their interlaced hands.

“I did the same thing. When you left after Mount Weather, or when you stayed in Polis with Lexa. I tried to keep hating you because it would have been so much easier. But I couldn’t stop loving you either.”

She nodded slowly. “That’s how I knew Josephine would keep her happiest memory with Gabriel here. She needs to put it with the memories she can’t look at because otherwise it’s harder to hate him, and she _needs_ to hate him. He’s not on her side anymore. And Josephine doesn’t care about people who aren’t on her side. She killed her best friend without even blinking.”

“But she loved Gabriel.” He realised. _“Really_ loved him.”

“Yeah. Which makes it almost impossible to hate him completely. So if she puts her happiest memory with him in a box and hides it away where she doesn’t have to look at it, she can pretend that their relationship was just like any other she’s had, that it wasn’t as important as it was. She thinks humans are boring and predictable and that love is weakness. But it isn’t.”

“No. It isn’t.” He squeezed her hand.

She eyed the lever. “It always comes down to this, doesn’t it? Me and a choice.”

“This isn’t a choice, Clarke, it’s the only option.”

“Careful, that was almost an oxymoron.” She said lightly, and right now was a really inconvenient time to kiss her again but he didn’t care because he wanted to and he loved her and–

Clarke brought their joined hands up and yanked the lever down and the memory juddered and then switched off, like a lightbulb burning out, plunging them into darkness.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clarke bolted upright in bed, screaming at the pain in her head, and it took her a few seconds to understand where she was. As her senses came back, she felt the familiar pressure of an IV needle under her skin, and the bright lights of the lab started to make her eyes water.

She blinked a few times, trying to get ahold of herself.

“Clarke?” Someone asked, and she rubbed her eyebrow before trying to look again. When she did, she could see, albeit blurrily, Raven, Miller, Murphy and Emori all hovering around the gurney she was sitting on.

The voice spoke again.

“Clarke, is that you?” It was Raven asking. Raven who sounded more emotional than she’d heard in a long time, Raven who suddenly sounded like she actually cared. It shouldn’t have surprised Clarke, but it did.

She swallowed, mouth desperately dry, and nodded, just once.

That seemed to be enough, because Raven threw her arms around her, jolting the wires and tubes she was hooked up to and making her flinch.

“Sorry,” she said, leaping back again, hands in the air. “I’m… Clarke, we thought you _died.”_

“So did I.” She said wearily, shooting a glare at Russell, who was standing sheepishly in the corner.

“It took so long, we were starting to think…” Raven trailed off, but Clarke could infer what she meant.

Her head was pounding.

Miller clapped her on the shoulder. “Glad you’re not dead, Griffin.”

She chuckled, wincing when it made her headache worse. “Thanks, Miller.”

She heard a noise to her left and when she looked around, Murphy was crying angrily and Emori was trying to soothe him.

“Don’t tell me those tears are for me, Murphy,” she elbowed him, “you and I both know you couldn’t care less what happens to me.”

“Shut the fuck up, Clarke.” He sniffed, but his hand reached out and gripped hers like a vice.

She tried to orient herself, but it was a lot to handle, and there were memories from her mindscape slotting into her head while she came back to herself. Raven passed her a cup of water which she accepted gratefully, and she drained the entire thing before she attempted speaking again.

“Uhm.” She started. “Why am I here? Why are you all here?”

“Russell came to us, told us how to bring you back.” Miller said.

She frowned. “How?”

“We had to hook someone up to you, send them into your mind to tell you how to lock Josephine into her mind drive so that you could take over again.” Raven explained. “Don’t worry, we’ve taken the drive out now.”

Clarke felt like she was missing something important. “But… the only people in my head were… _Oh my god.”_

She whipped her head around, looking for him, and found him, still unconscious, on the lab chair. Unlike her, he was no longer attached to anything, but she could see the tape on his arm where a needle mark must have been.

 _“Bellamy.”_   She gasped.

She started yanking at the wires holding her to the bed in an effort to get to him, and Emori and Miller both put their hands on her shoulders to halt her progress.

“Whoa, whoa, don’t worry, he’s fine, the sedative is just wearing off.” Miller said, pacifying.

Unfortunately, he had no idea that the memories of everything she’d said and done in the mindscape were just finished sliding into place, and that she was now panicked for a new, very different reason.

She shook her head, ignoring how it made her eyes throb. “Get me out of these, please.”

“We should probably examine you first–”

“–Raven,” she interrupted, pleading, “please, I need… I need…”

Raven didn’t seem to expect her to finish the sentiment, she just sighed and started carefully removing the wires while Emori took out the IV.

While they worked, she watched Bellamy, and she could see him beginning to wake up, fingers twitching and his chest moving different as he took shorter breaths.

When they were done, she swung her legs over the edge and stumbled to her feet, almost losing it when her knees buckled. Luckily, Miller was standing close, and he caught her under the arm and kept her upright.

He helped her over to the chair. Once she was close enough to grab the arm and hold herself up, he stepped back, because Miller had always been good at reading a room.

She leaned against the chair, face above Bellamy’s, searching it for a sign of consciousness.

Bellamy frowned as he opened his eyes, lashes fluttering as he confronted the light, but it didn’t take long for him to focus.

“Clarke?” He asked, voice hoarse from underuse.

That was all it took to make her cry.

He looked semi-alarmed at the sudden tears, but he adapted quickly, sitting up enough that they were at eye-level and carefully brushing them from her cheeks. She definitely wasn’t thinking about the fact that she was now standing between the V of his legs. Or that this was closest they’d been in the real world since she’d told him he was her family.

“Hey Princess.” He whispered.

“You idiot,” she sobbed, fingers fisting his shirt in some combination of frustration and happiness and fifty other competing emotions. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He huffed out a breath. “I tried, but Wells was there, and then Harper, and–”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

Something flickered behind his eyes. “I… it was never the right time. Why didn’t you?”

She choked out a laugh, tears dripping onto her forearms. “I don’t deserve it. Never did.”

“Don’t.” His expression hardened. “Don’t you dare. You do deserve it, Clarke. You deserve to be happy, but even if you didn’t, it’s not about what you deserve, Clarke.”

 _“Thank you,”_ she said, trying to making him understand how much she meant it with just her eyes, “for keeping me alive, again.”

His face crumpled and then it was his turn for the tears to fall. He wrapped her in a hug, burying his face in the crook of her neck as he cried, teardrops soaking her shirt. He was clutching at her like he couldn’t quite believe she was real, and she understood the feeling.

It could have been minutes or hours by the time he pulled back, but when he did, there was a smile playing about his lips and his shoulders were straighter, like a weight had been removed.

“You _really_ don’t make it easy, Princess.” He said, and then he tilted his head forward and kissed her like she was oxygen and he’d been holding his breath.

Kissing him in the mindscape had been nice, but at the time she’d been assuming he was just another projection in her head. Kissing him in the real world was so much _better._ He felt more solid under her hands, his warmth radiated out and enveloped her along with his arms, his lips felt slightly chapped instead of the perfect way they were in her head. All the imperfections only made it feel more real, more tangible, and she anchored herself to reality with his lips on hers.

She was still breathing.

And he tasted like hope.

**Author's Note:**

> well, that was about 6k longer than it was supposed to be, but i was just having so much fun writing it, i couldn't stop!! to quote the Doctor, "it got away from me, yeah."
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it!!
> 
> Comments make me happier than Clarke realising Bellamy loves her back (which, i'll have you know, is A LOT)
> 
> <3 <3 <3


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